Industrial Health Survey of the Bath Iron Works Corporation for the Maritime Commission (1942)

A survey of health conditions at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, made for the U.S. Maritime Commission and dated September 22, 1942, by Philip Drinker of the Harvard School of Public Health with Navy medical officers and ensigns. It covers the yard's medical department, accident records, ventilation, welding, spray painting, solvents and protective equipment. In the pipe covering shop, where asbestos matting was cut and pounded into covers for ships' pipes and hard asbestos was cut on a bandsaw, the surveyors found that "conditions in this shop present a very real asbestosis hazard."

What it shows

The surveyors reported that a homemade exhaust on the bandsaw had "practically no effect," with dust spreading "in all directions." They urged that the dustiest work be moved to a ventilated area with proper local exhaust, that workers wear dust respirators if conditions could not be controlled, and that all workers' chests be examined every six months. They also told the yard's insurer, American Mutual Liability Insurance Company, that the yard and the insurer "had been lax in checking up, especially on dust control in asbestos handling." Drinker went on to co-author the Fleischer-Drinker Study of shipyard pipe coverers, published in 1946.